1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to gloves for use by forensic personnel and crime scene officers, and methods of use production and use of such gloves.
2. Background Art
There are standard techniques which are used at crime scenes that require the identification of a suspect. For example, investigating officers use various reagents, powders and chemicals to reveal and enhance latent impressions that are left by physical contact by persons at crime scenes, such techniques being frequently referred to as fingerprinting.
Since the advent of fingerprinting, burglars and other criminals have worn gloves in a bid to avoid their fingerprints being found and identified at the scene of a crime. Such gloves may be of leather, textiles, plastics such as PVC, or an elastomer such as rubber latex
Any physical contact leaves a trace (Locard's law states that when A comes into contact with B a trace of B is deposited on A and a trace of A is deposited on B). All gloves leave an impression, but new latex glove impressions are quite difficult to develop when compared to fingerprints and can be easily missed; this is due to crime scene investigation (CSI) techniques being primarily aimed at developing fingerprints, because the reagent used adheres best to fingerprint grease. Development of marks left by a latex glove becomes easier when the glove's surface has become contaminated through use.
Techniques have recently been devised to make it far easier to identify individuals who leave their glove prints on surfaces. It has been shown that random elements in the manufacturing process, and subsequent wear and tear, create discernible differences between all gloves, even between those produced at the same time and using the same machinery.
These differences, which are often invisible to the naked eye, mean that, when pressed against a hard surface, each individual glove can leave a recognisable set of glove prints, based on the unique characteristics of that glove.
Glove prints can be used to prove that a particular glove was used in a crime. If the glove itself can be recovered from a suspect and its prints matched against prints taken at crime scene, this can provide valuable evidence for use in prosecution.
A database of thousands of such glove prints collected by forensic officers has therefore been collated, allowing officers to match a set of glove prints from one crime scene to those found at another such crime scene, or to a glove recovered from a suspect. See, for example, The Telegraph “Police use glove prints to catch criminals” published 13 Dec. 2008, the article being available from online sources.
However, a significant problem with the collection of glove prints at crime scenes arises because investigating officers (and others legitimately attending the crime scene) are required to wear gloves (generally thin natural rubber latex or nitrile rubber gloves) in order to avoid leaving their own fingerprints. It can therefore be difficult or impossible to distinguish the myriad of glove prints legitimately left at crime scenes from those left by the criminal.
Therefore, Applicant has devised natural rubber latex or nitrile rubber disposable gloves which can help alleviate this problem, a batch of such gloves, and also a method of producing such gloves, as well as a method of use of such gloves at crime scenes.